For their 70th annual production, Oxford Theatre Guild is staging George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at the Oxford Playhouse, promising to “capture […] the essence of Shaw’s work in a way that resonates with today’s audiences.” It certainly succeeds in this. While this announcement initially led me to expect a modernised adaptation of Shaw’s exploration of class differences, upward social mobility and identity, the production stays close to the original setting of the early 20th century. This is not to its detriment, as the story (perhaps most widely known for inspiring the musical and 1964 film My Fair Lady, starring Audrey Hepburn) is a timeless one.
By chance, linguist and phonetician Henry Higgins meets flower girl Eliza Doolittle, who is trying to sell flowers to a group of wealthy Londoners taking shelter from the rain, and is intrigued by her strong Cockney accent. They are joined by a man who introduces himself as Colonel Pickering, a fellow phonetician admired by Higgins, and Higgins claims that in only a few months’ time, he could pass Eliza off as a duchess at a garden party by teaching her “better English.”
When Eliza shows up at Higgins’ house the next day, she reminds him of this claim and asks him to teach her, hoping that getting rid of her accent will allow her to work at a flower shop in the future, rather than selling flowers on the street. Higgins, though warned against this reckless endeavour by his housekeeper Mrs Pearce, makes a bet with Pickering and accepts the challenge, taking Eliza in to live with them.
After a few missteps, Eliza’s hard work over the next months pays off, and she successfully mimics a duchess at a garden party. For Higgins and Pickering, what was nothing more than an amusing pastime and phonetic experiment ends here, and they are relieved it is over. But Eliza is furious: where is she to go, and what is she to make of her situation now that she has been integrated into an upper-class world but lacks any independence or prospects for the future?
Director Dan Whitley has rightly chosen to portray Higgins (Vaughan Pierce) not as a villain, but as a man so privileged he cannot comprehend the consequences his experiment will have for Eliza. Nor does he see the labour which the women around him – including his mother, Mrs Higgins (Amanda Holland), and Mrs Pearce (Triona Adams) – take on every day so that he can continue his carefree life of joking around and conducting his research on phonetics.
Pierce’s Higgins is excellently oblivious to his faults, even when they are pointed out to him, and shifts between this friendly obliviousness and the crude insults he levels at Eliza. Even when he does not have any lines, Pierce’s perfectly executed mannerisms and eye contact with other actors are fantastic to watch. The scenes he shares with Pickering (Paul Clifford) or Holland as Mrs Higgins are unfailingly hilarious. His acting is, without a doubt, one of the best parts of Pygmalion.
Eleanor Schofield, as Eliza, complements Pierce’s vigour, allowing Eliza’s defiant and bold personality to shine through throughout the course of her transformation. She delivers a brilliant final scene, in which she thanks Pickering and condemns Higgins for his selfishness. Whitley’s decision to remove any romantic implications from Higgins’ and Eliza’s relationship is much appreciated and does not weaken this final scene, in which Higgins, perhaps for the first time, realises how far Eliza has come – and how much he, despite believing he is generously doing “this poor girl” a service, has taken her presence for granted. My one criticism would be that, like a few other key scenes in Pygmalion, this scene was slightly too drawn-out, which unfortunately caused its tension to fall.
Though Schofield and Pierce especially stand out, it would be a disservice not to mention Holland’s skilful performance as Mrs Higgins, the voice of reason and hilariously grounded counterpart to her negligent son, just like Jo Green’s highly eccentric Alfred Doolittle. The colourful set and costuming that bring pre-war London to life are also masterfully designed.
“Who owns a transformation – the individual or those who shape them? How much agency does Eliza really have? And how far have we actually come in class and gender equality?” Writing in the programme, Whitley poses these questions to the audience. And indeed, Oxford Theatre Guild’s Pygmalion asks all of this, and it does so without ignoring the nuances to each question, carving out entertaining characters that can all be scrutinised and sympathised with.
This is no mean feat, as the setting – a poor, uneducated Cockney flower girl trying to pass as a duchess – could easily result in elitist, one-sided amusement at the expense of its protagonist Eliza. Instead, however, the production was acutely aware that it is the interactions between all these characters from different social backgrounds, and the way the play interrogates the social class system, which make Pygmalion special. Judging from the near-constant chuckling and laughter from the audience, I was not the only one who was completely enamoured by this take on Shaw’s play, and I would recommend you go to see it!
[Pygmalion, staged by Oxford Theatre Guild, is running at the Oxford Playhouse, 1st-5th March]